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Per Year, Fifty cents 




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Xittle 3ournei?0 

SERIES FOR 1896 

Xittle Sourness to the Ibomes of 
American Butbors 

The papers below specified, were, with the 
exception of that contributed by the editor, 
Mr. Hubbard, originally issued by the late 
G. P. Putnam, in 1853, in a series entitled 
Hotnes of American Authoj's. It is now 
nearly half a century since this series (which 
won for itself at the time a very noteworthy 
prestige) was brought before the public ; and 
the present publishers feel that no apology is 
needed in presenting to a new generation of 
American readers papers of such distinctive 
biographical interest and literary value. 

No. I, Emerson, by Geo. W. Curtis. 

2, Bryant, by Caroline M. Kirkland. 

3, Prescott, by Geo. S. Hillard. 

4, Lowell, by Charles F. Briggs, 

5, Simms, by Wm. CuUen Bryant. 

6, Walt Whitman, by Elbert Hubbard. 

7, Hawthorne, by Geo. Wm. Curtis. 

8, Audubon, by Parke Godwin. 

9, Irving, by H. T. Tuckerman. 

10, Longfellow by Geo. Wm. Curtis. 

11, Everett, by Geo. S. Hillard. 

12, Bancroft, by Geo. W^. Greene. 

The above papers, which will form the 
series of Little Journeys for the year 1896, 
will be issued monthly, beginning January, 
in the same general style as the series of 
1895, at socts. a year. Single copies, 5 cts., 
postage paid. 

Entered at the Post Office, New RocheUe, N. Y., 
as second class matter 



Copyright, 1896, by 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 * 29 West 23D Street, New York 

24 Bedford Street, Strand, London 

The Knickerbockek Press, New Rochelle, N. Y. 



o^b^'^ 






PRESCOTT. 



75 



with the benevolent mission of Gasca then the 
historian of the Conquest may be permitted to 
terminate his labors,— with feelings not unlike 
those of the traveller, who, having long jour- 
neyed among the dreary forests and dangerous 
defiles of the mountains, at length emerges on 
some pleasant landscape smiling in tranquillity 

and peace. 

Conquest of Peru. 



76 



FOREWORD 

Mr. George S. Hillard, who wrote this 
essay in 1852, was a lawyer with a liking 
for letters. He was a personal friend of 
Mr. Prescott's, and such an admirer of the 
historian's work that when he published 
unsigned articles, people often said 
"Prescott" — and then was Mr. Hillard 
greatly pleased. His style is as broadly 
generous and calmly flowing as the 
Niagara just below the Falls: only a 
Lake Erie of words, and a cataract of 
ideas could supply it. And if he chose 
to speak of a man's mother as his "im- 
mediate maternal ancestor," or a boat- 
ride as "an aquatic excursion " it surely 
was his legal right 

E. H. 



77 



PRESCOTT 



BY GEO. S. HII,I,ARD.* 



THE true idea of a home includes 
something more than a place to live 
in. It involves elements which are 
intangible and imponderable. It means a 
particular spot in which the mind is de- 
veloped, the character trained, and the 
affections fed. It supposes a chain of 
association, by which mute material forms 
are linked to certain states of thoughts 
and moods of feeling, so that our joys and 
sorrows, our struggles and triumphs, are 
chronicled on the walls of a house, the 
trunk of a tree, or the walks of a garden. 

* Written in 1853 for Futusm's Homes oj" Ameri- 
can Authors . 

79 



Iprescott 

Many persons are so unhappy as to pass 
through life without these sweet influ- 
ences. Their lives are wandering and 
nomadic, and their temporary places of 
shelter are mere tents, though built of 
brick or wood. The bride is brought 
home to one house, the child is born in 
another, and dies in a third. As we walk 
through the unexpressive squares of one 
of our cities, and mark their dreary mo- 
notony of front, and their ever-changing 
door-plates, how few of these houses are 
there that present themselves to the eye 
with any of these symbols and indications 
of home. These, we say instinctively, 
are mere parallelograms of air, with sec- 
tions and divisions at regular intervals, 
in which men may eat and sleep, but not 
live, in the large meaning of the term. 

But a country-house, however small 
and plain, if it be only well placed, as in 
the shadow of a patriarchal tree, or on 
the banks of a stream, or in a hollow of a 
sheltering hill, has more of the look of 
borne than many a costly city mansion. 
80 



prescott 

In the former, a portion of nature seems 
to have been subdued and converted to the 
uses of man, and yet its primitive charac- 
ter to have remained unchanged ; but, in 
the latter, nature has been slain and 
buried, and a huge brick monument 
erected to her memory. We read that 
"God setteth the solitary in families." 
The significance of this beautiful expres- 
sion dwells in its last word. The solitary 
are not set in hotels or boarding-houses, 
nor yet in communities or phalansteries, 
but in families. The burden of solitude 
is to be lightened by household affections, 
and not by mere aggregation. True so- 
ciety — that which the heart craves and 
the character needs — is only to be found 
at home, and what are called the cares 
of house-keeping, from which so many 
selfishly and indolently shrink, when 
lighted by mutual forbearance and un- 
pretending self-sacrifice, become occasion 
of endearment and instruction of moral 
and spiritual growth. 

The partial deprivation of sight under 



prescott 

which Mr. Prescott has long labored, is 
now a fact in literary history almost as 
well known as the blindness of Milton 
or the lameness of Scott. Indeed, 
many magnify in their thoughts the 
extent of his loss, and picture to them- 
selves the author of " Ferdinand and 
Isabella" as a venerable personage, 
entirely sightless, whose '*dark steps" 
require a constant "guiding hand," and 
are greatly surprised when they see this 
ideal image transformed into a figure re- 
taining a more than common share of 
youthful lightness of movement, and a 
countenance full of freshness and anima- 
tion, which betrays to a casual observa- 
tion no mark of visual imperfection. 
The weight of this trial, heavy indeed to 
a man of literary tastes, has been bal- 
anced in Mr. Prescott' s case by great 
compensations. He has been happy in the 
home he has made for himself, and happy 
in the troops of loving and sympathizing 
friends whom he has gathered around 
him. He has been happy in the early 
82 



prescott 

possession of that leisure which has en- 
abled him to give his whole energies to 
literary labors, without distraction or 
interruption, and most of all, happy in 
his own genial temper, his cheerful spirit, 
his cordial frankness, and that disposition 
to look on the bright side of men and 
things, which is better not only than 
house and land, but than genius and fame. 
It is his privilege, by no means universal 
with successful authors, to be best valued 
where most known ; and the graceful 
tribute which his intimate friend, Mr. 
Ticknor, has paid to him, in the preface 
to his History of Spanish Literature, that 
his "honors will always be dearest to 
those who have best known the discour- 
agements under which they have been 
won, and the modesty and gentleness 
with which they are worn," is but an ex- 
pression of the common feeling of all 
those who know him. 

To come down to smaller matters, Mr. 
Prescott has been fortunate in the merely 
local influences which have helped to 
83 



Iprescott 

train his mind and character. His lines 
have fallen to him in pleasant places. 
His father, who removed from Salem to 
Boston when he himself was quite young, 
lived for many years in a house in Bedford 
Street, now swept away by the march of 
change, the effect of which, in a place of 
limited extent like Boston, is to crowd 
the population into constantly narrowing 
spaces. It was one of a class of houses 
of which but few specimens are now left 
in our densely settled peninsula. 

It was built of brick, painted yellow, 
was square in form, and had rooms on 
either side of the front door. It had little 
architectural merit and no architectural 
pretension. But it stood by itself, and 
was not imprisoned in a block, had a few 
feet of land between the front door and 
the street, and a reasonable amount of 
breathing-space and elbow-room at the 
sides and in the rear, and was shaded by 
some fine elms and horse-chestnuts. It 
had a certain individual character and 
expression of its own. Here Mr. Prescott 
84 



Iprcscott 

the elder, commonly known and addressed 
in Boston as Judge Prescott, lived from 
1817 to 1844, the year of his death. 

Mr. Prescott the younger, the historian, 
upon his marriage, did not leave his 
father's house to seek a new home, but, 
complying with a kindly custom more 
common in Europe, at least upon the 
Continent, than in America, continued 
to reside under the paternal roof, the two 
families forming one united and affection- 
ate household, which, in the latter years 
of Judge Prescott's life, presented most 
engaging forms of age, mature life, and 
blooming youth. As Mr. Prescott's circle 
of research grew wider, the house was 
enlarged by the addition of a study, to 
accommodate his books and manuscripts, 
and here fame found him living when she 
came to seek him after the publication of 
the History of Ferdinand and Isabella. 
No one of those who were so fortunate as 
to enjoy the friendship of both the father 
and the son ever walks by the spot where 
this house once stood, without recalling 
85 



Iptescott 



witli a mingling of pleasure and of pain 
its substantial and respectable appearance, 
its warm atmosphere of welcome and 
hospitality, and the dignified form, so ex- 
pressive of wisdom and of worth, of that 
admirable person who so long presided 
over it. This house was pulled down a 
few years since, soon after the death of 
Judge Prescott ; his son having previously 
removed to the house in Beacon Street, 
in which he now lives during the winter 
months. 

Few authors have ever been so rich in 
dwelling-places as Mr. Prescott. '* The 
truth is," says he in a letter to Mr. George 
P. Putnam, **I have three places of resi- 
dence, among which I contrive to distrib- 
ute my year. Six months I pass in town, 
where my house is in Beacon Street, 
looking on the Common, which, as you 
may recollect, is an uncommonly fine 
situation, commanding a noble view of 
land and water." 

There is little in the external aspect of 
this house in Beacon Street to distinguish 
86 



preecott 

it from others in its immediate vicinity. 
It is one of a continuous but not uniform 
block. It is of brick, painted white, four 
stories high, and with one of those swelled 
fronts which are characteristic of Boston. 
It has the usual proportion and distribu- 
tion of drawing-rooms, dining-room, and 
chambers, which are furnished with un- 
pretending elegance and adorned with 
some portraits, copies of originals in 
Spain, illustrative of Mr. Prescott's writ- 
ings. The most striking portion of the 
interior consists of an ample library, 
added by Mr. Prescott to the rear of the 
house, and communicating with the 
drawing-rooms. It is an apartment of 
noble size and fine proportions, filled with 
a choice collection of books, mostly his- 
torical, which are disposed in cases of 
richly-veined and highly-polished oak. 
This room, which is much used in the 
social arrangements of the household, is 
not that in which Mr. Prescott does his 
hard literary work. A much smaller 
apartment, above the library and com- 
87 



prescott 

municating with it, is the working study 
— an arrangement similar to that adopted 
by Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. 

Mr. Prescott's collection of books has 
been made with special reference to his 
own departments of inquiry, and in these 
it is very rich. It contains many works 
which cannot be found in any other pri- 
vate library, at least, in this country. 
Besides these, he has a large number of 
manuscripts, amounting in the aggregate 
to not less than twenty thousand folio 
pages, illustrative of the periods of his- 
tory treated in his works. These manu- 
scripts have been drawn from all parts of 
Burope, as well as from the States of 
Spanish origin in this country. He has 
also many curious and valuable auto- 
graphs. 

Nor is the interest of this apartment 
confined to its books and manuscripts. 
Over the window at the northern end, 
there are two swords suspended, and 
crossed like a pair of clasped hands. 
One of these was borne by Colonel Pres- 
88 



prescott 

cott at Bunker Hill, and the other by Cap- 
tain Linzee, the maternal grandfather of 
Mrs. Prescott, who commanded the British 
sloop of war Falcon, which was engaged 
in firing upon the American troops on 
that occasion. It is a significant and 
suggestive sight, from which a thought- 
ful mind may draw out a long web of 
reflection. These swords, once waving 
in hostile hands, but now amicably lying 
side by side, symbolize not merely the 
union of families once opposed in deadly 
struggle, but, as we hope and trust, the 
mood of peace which is destined to guide 
the two great nations which, like parted 
streams, trace back their source to the 
same parent fountain. 

On entering the library from the draw- 
ing-room, the visitor sees at first no egress 
except by the door through which he has 
just passed ; but, on his attention being 
called to a particular space in the popu- 
lous shelves, he is, if a reading man, 
attracted by some rows of portly quartos 
and goodly octavos, handsomely bound, 



prescott 

bearing inviting names, unknown to 
Lowndes or Brunet. On reaching forth 
his hand to take one of them down, he 
finds that while they keep the word of 
promise to the eye, they break it to the 
hope, for the seeming books are nothing 
but strips of gilded leather pasted upon a 
flat surface, and stamped with titles, in 
the selection of which, Mr. Prescott has 
indulged that playful fancy which, though 
it can rarely appear in his grave historical 
works, is constantly animating his corre- 
spondence and conversation. It is, in 
short, a secret door, opening at the touch 
of a spring, and concealed from observa- 
tion when shut. A small winding stair- 
case leads to a room of moderate extent 
above, so arranged as to give all possible 
advantage of light to the imperfect eyes 
of the historian. Here Mr. Prescott gath- 
ers around him the books and manu- 
scripts in use for the particular work on 
which he may be engaged, and few per- 
sons, except himself and his secretary, 
ever penetrate to this studious retreat, 
go 



pccscott 

In regard to situation, few houses in 
any city are superior to this. It stands 
directly upon the Common, a beautiful 
piece of ground, tastefully laid out, 
molded into an exhilerating variety of 
surface, and only open to the objection 
of being too much cut up by the inter- 
secting paths which the time-saving habits 
of the thrifty Bostonians have traced 
across it. Mr. Prescott's house stands 
nearly opposite a small sheet of water, 
to which the tasteless name of Frog Pond 
is so inveterately fixed by long usage, that 
it can never be divorced from it. Of late 
years, since the introduction of the Co- 
chituate water, a fountain has been made 
to play here, which throws up an obelisk 
of sparkling silver, springing from the 
bosom of the little lake, like a palm-tree 
from the sands, producing, in its simple 
beauty, a far finer effect than some of the 
costly architectural fancies of Europe. 

Here a beautiful spectacle may be seen 
in the long afternoons of June, before the 
midsummer heats have browned the grass, 
91 



Iprescott 

when the crystal plumes of the fountain 
are waving in the breeze, and the rich, 
yellow light of the slow-sinking sun 
hangs in the air and throws long shadows 
on the turf, and the Common is sprinkled, 
far and wide, with well-dressed and well- 
mannered crowds — a spectacle in which 
not only the eye but the heart also may 
take pleasure, from the evidence which 
it furnishes of the general diflfusion of 
material comfort, worth and intelligence. 
Here in the early days of spring, the 
timid crocus and snowdrop peep from 
the soil long before the iron hand of 
winter has been lifted from the rest of 
the city. Besides the near attraction of 
the Common, which is beautiful in all 
seasons, this part of Boston, from its ele- 
vated position, commands a fine view of 
the western horizon, including a range 
of graceful and thickly-peopled hills in 
Brookline and Roxbury. Our brilliant 
winter sunsets are seen here to the great- 
est advantage. The whole western sky 
bums with rich metallic lights of orange, 
92 



Iprescott 

yellow, and yellow-green ; the outlines 
of the hills in the clear, frosty air, are 
sharply cut against this glowing back- 
ground ; the wind-harps of the leafless 
trees send forth a melancholy music, and 
the faint stars steal out one by one as the 
shrouding veil of daylight is slowly with- 
drawn. A walk at this hour along the 
western side of the Common offers a 
larger amount of the soothing and eleva- 
ting influences of nature than most dwell- 
ers in cities can command. 

In this house in Beacon Street, Mr. 
Prescott lives for about half the year, en- 
gaged in literary research, and finding re- 
lief from his studies in the society of a 
numerous circle of friends, a precious 
possession, in which no man is more rich. 
Few persons in our country are so exclu- 
sively men of letters. His time and 
energies are not at all given to the excit- 
ing and ephemeral claims of the passing 
hour, but devoted to those calm researches 
the results of which have appeared in his 
published works. He is strongly social 
93 



prescott 

in his tastes and habits, and his manners 
and conversation in society are uncom- 
monly free from that stiffness and cold- 
ness which are apt to creep over students. 
He retains more of youthful ease and un- 
reserve than most men, whatever be their 
way of life, carry into middle age. He is 
methodical in his habits of exercise as 
well as of study, and is much given to 
long walks, as in former years to long 
rides. These periods of exercise, how- 
ever, are not wholly idle. From his de- 
fective sight he has acquired the habit 
(not a very common one) of thinking 
without the pen, and many a smooth 
period has been wrought and polished in 
the forge of the brain while in the saddle 
or on foot. 

The occupants of most of the houses in 
that part of Boston where Mr. Prescott 
lives, are birds of passage. As soon as 
the sun of our short-lived summer puts 
off the countenance of a friend, and puts 
on that of a foe, one by one they take 
their flight. House after house shuts up 
94 



IPrescott 

its green lids, and resigns itself to a three 
or four months' sleep. The owners dis- 
tribute themselves among various places 
of retreat, rural, suburban or marine, 
more or less remote. Mr. Prescott also 
quits the noise, dust and heat of Boston 
at this season, and takes refuge for some 
weeks in a cottage at Nahant. "This 
place," he writes to the publisher, "is a 
cottage— what Lady Emeline Stuart Wort- 
ley calles in her Travels *a charming 
country villa ' at Nahant, where for more 
than twenty years I have passed the sum- 
mer months, as it is the coolest spot in 
New England. The house stands on a 
bald cliff, overlooking the ocean, so near 
that in a storm the I'spray is thrown over 
the piazza, and as it is located on the ex- 
treme point of the ipeninsula, is many 
miles out at sea. There is more than one 
printed account of Nahant, which is a re- 
markable watering-place, from the bold 
formation of the coast and its exposure 
to the ocean. It is not a bad place— this 
sea-girt citadel— for reverie and writing, 
95 



Iprc0cott 

with the music of the winds and waters 
incessantly beating on the rocks and broad 
beaches below. This place is called * Fitful 
Head,' and Noma's was not wilder." 

The peninsula of Nahant, which Mr. 
Prescott has thus briefly described, is a 
rocky promontory running out to sea 
from the mainland of Ivynn, to which it 
is connected by a straight beach, some 
two or three miles in length, divided into 
two unequal portions by a bold headland 
called Ivittle Nahant. It j uts out abruptly, 
in an adventurous and defying way, and 
laid down on a map of a large scale, it 
looks like an outstretched arm with a 
clenched fist at the end of it. Thus going 
out to sea to battle with the waves on our 
stormy New England coast, it is built of 
the strongest materials which the labora- 
tory of Nature can furnish. It is a solid 
mass of the hardest porphyritic rock, 
over which a thin drapery of soil is 
thrown. At the southern extremity this 
wall of rock is broken into grand, irregu- 
lar forms, and seamed and scarred with 
96 



Iprescott 

the marks of innumerable conflicts. A 
lover of Nature in her sterner moods 
can find few spots of more attraction 
than this presents after a south-easterly 
storm. The dark ridges of the rapid 
waves leap upon the broken cliffs with an 
expression so like that of animal rage, 
that it is difficult to believe that they are 
not conscious of what they are about. But 
in an instant the gray mass is broken into 
splinters of snowy spray, which glide and 
hiss over the rocky points and hang their 
dripping and fleecy locks along the sheer 
wall, the dazzling white contrasting as 
vividly with the reddish brown of the 
rock, as does the passionate movement 
with the monumental calm. One is never 
weary of watching so glorious a spectacle, 
for though the elements remain the same, 
yet, from their combination, there results 
a constant variety of form and movement. 
Nature never repeats herself. As no two 
pebbles on a beach are identical, so no 
two waves ever break upon a rock in pre- 
cisely the same way. 
97 



IPcescott 

The beach which connects the head- 
land of little Nahant with the mainland 
of Lynn, is about a mile and a half long, 
and curved into the finest line of beauty. 
At low tide there is a space of some twenty 
or thirty rods wide, left bare by the re- 
ceding waters. This has a very gentle 
inclination, and having been hammered 
upon so long by the action of the waves, 
it is as hard and smooth as a marble floor, 
presenting an inviting field for exercise, 
whether on foot, in carriages, or on horse^ 
back. The wheels roll over it in silence 
and leave no indentation behind, and even 
the hoofs of a galloping steed make but 
a momentary impression. On a fine 
breezy afternoon, in the season, when the 
tide is favorable, this beach presents a 
most exhilarating spectacle, for the whole 
gay world of the place is attracted here : 
some in carriages, some on horseback, 
and some on foot. Every kind of car- 
riage that American ingenuity has ever 
devised is here represented, from the old- 
fashioned family coach, with its air of 
98 



prescott 

solid, churcli and state respectability, to 
the sporting man's wagon, which looks 
like a vehicular tarantula, all wheels and 
no body. The inspiriting influence of 
the scene extends itself to both bipeds 
and quadrupeds. Little boys and girls 
race about on the fascinating wet sand, 
so that their nurses, what with the waves 
and what with the horses' hoofs, are kept 
in a perpetual frenzy of apprehension. 
Sober pedestrians, taking their ** consti- 
tutional " involuntarily quicken their 
pace, as if they were really walking for 
pleasure in the coolness and moisture un- 
der them. Fair equestrians dash across 
the beach at full gallop, their veils and 
dresses streaming on the breeze, attended 
by their own flying shadows in the smooth 
watery mirror of the yellow sands. Let 
the waves curl and break in long lines of 
dazzling foam and spring upon the beach 
as if they enjoyed their own restless 
play ; sprinkle the bay with snowy sails 
for the setting sun to linger and play 
upon, and cover the whole with a bright 
99 



prescott 

blue sky dappled with drifting clouds, 
and all these elements make up so ani- 
mating a scene, that a man must be very- 
moody or very apathetic not to feel his 
heart grow lighter as he gazes upon it. 

The position of Nahant, and its con- 
venient distance from Boston, makes it a 
place of much resort in the hot months 
of Summer. There are many hotels and 
boarding-houses ; and also a large num- 
ber of cottages, occupied for the most 
part by families, the heads of which come 
up to town every day and return in the 
evening. The climate and scenery are so 
marked, that they give rise to very de- 
cided opinions. Many pronounce Nahant 
delightful, but some do not hesitate to 
call it detestable. No place can be more 
marine and less rural. There are no 
woods and very few trees. There are 
none but ocean sights and ocean sounds. 
It is like being out at sea in a great ship 
that does not rock. As every wind blows 
off the bay, the temperature of the air is 
very low, and the clear green water looks 

100 



Iprescott 

cold enough in a hot August noon to 
make one's teeth chatter, so that it re- 
quires some resolution to venture upon a 
bath, and still more to repeat the experi- 
ment. The characteristic climate of Na- 
hant may be observed in one of those 
days not uncommon on the coast of New 
England, when a sharp east wind sets in 
after a hot morning. The sea turns up a 
chill steel-blue surface, and the air is so 
cold that it is not comfortable to sit still 
in the shade, while the sky, the parched 
grass, the dusty roads, and the sunshine 
bright and cold, like moonbeams, give to 
the eye a strangely deceptive promise of 
heat. Under the calm light of a broad, 
full moon, Nahant puts on a strange and 
unearthly beauty. The sea sparkles in 
silver gleams, and its phosphoric foam is 
in vivid contrast with the inky shadows 
of the cliffs. The ships dart away into 
the luminous distance, like spectral forms. 
In the deep stillness, the sullen plunge 
of the long, breaking waves becomes op- 
pressive to the spirits. The roofs of the 

lOI 



Iprescott 

cottages glitter with spiritual light, and 
the white line of the dusty road is turned 
into a path of pearl. 

The cottage which Mr. Prescott occu- 
pies at Nahant is built of wood, two 
stories in height and has a spacious piazza 
running round it, which in fine weather 
is much used as a supplementary draw- 
ing-room. There is nothing remarkable 
whatever in its external appearance. Its 
plain and unassuming aspect provokes 
neither criticism nor admiration. Its situ- 
ation is one of the finest in the whole 
peninsula. It stands upon the extremity 
of a bold, bluflf-like promontory, and its 
elevated position gives it the command 
of a very wide horizon. The sea makes 
up a large proportion of the prospect, and 
as every vessel that sails into or out of 
the harbor of Boston passes within range 
of the eye, there is never a moment in 
which the view is not animated by ships 
and canvas. The pier, where the steamer 
which plies between Boston and Nahant, 
lands and receives her passengers, and 

102 



Iprescott 

the Swallow's Cave, one of the sights of 
the place, are both within a stone's-throw 
of the cottage. 

Mr, Prescott resides at Nahant from 
eight to ten weeks, and finds a refreshing 
and restorative influence in its keenly- 
bracing sea-air. This, though a season 
of retirement, is by no means one of in- 
dolence, for he works as many hours 
every day and accomplishes as much, 
here, as in Boston, his time of study be- 
ing comparatively free from those inter- 
ruptions which in a busj' city will so often 
break into a scholar's seclusion. As his 
life at Nahant falls within the travelling 
season, he receives here many of the 
strangers who are attracted to his pres- 
ence by his literary reputation and the 
report of his amiable manners. And 
this tribute to celebrity, exacted in the 
form of golden hours from every dis- 
tinguished man in our enterprising and 
inquisitive age, is paid with a cheer- 
ful good-humor, which leaves no alloy 
in the recollections of those who have 
103 



prcscott 

thus enjoyed the privilege of his soci- 
ety. 

Mr. Prescott's second remove — for if 
poor Richard's saying be strictly true, he 
is burnt out every year — is from Nahant 
to Pepperell, and usually happens early 
in September. His home in Pepperell 
is thus described by him in a letter to Mr. 
Putnam : 

"The place at Pepperell has been in 
the family for more than a century and a 
half, an uncommon event among our 
locomotive people. The house is about 
a century old, the original building hav- 
ing been greatly enlarged by my father 
first, and since by me. It is here that 
my grandfather. Col. Wm. Prescott, who 
commanded at Bunker Hill, was born and 
died, and in the village church-yard he 
lies buried under a simple slab, contain- 
ing only the record of his name and age. 
My father, Wm. Prescott, the best and 
wisest of his name, was also born and 
passed his earlier days here, and, from my 
own infancy, not a year has passed that 
104 



prc6C0tt 

I have not spent more or less of in these 
shades, now hallowed to me by the recol- 
lection of happy hours and friends that 
are gone. 

"The place, which is called 'The 
Highlands,' consists of some two hundred 
and fifty acres, about forty-two miles from 
Boston, on the border-line of Massachu- 
setts and New Hampshire. It is a fine, 
rolling country ; and the house stands on 
a rising ground that descends with a 
gentle sweep to the Nissitisset, a clear 
and very pretty little river, affording 
picturesque views in its winding course. 
A bold mountain chain on the north- 
west, among which is the Grand Monad- 
noc, in New Hampshire, makes a dark 
frame to the picture. The land is well 
studded with trees — oak, walnut, chest- 
nut, and maple — distributed in clumps 
and avenues, so as to produce an excel- 
lent effect. The maple, in particular, in 
its autumn season, when the family are 
there, makes a brave show with its gay 
livery when touched by the frost." 
105 



prescott 

To possess an estate like that at Pep- 
perell, which has come down by lineal 
descent through several successions of 
owners, all of whom were useful and 
honorable men in their day and genera- 
tion, is a privilege not common any 
where, and very rare in a country like 
ours, young in years and not fruitful in 
local attachments. Family pride may be 
a weakness, but family reverence is a 
just and generous sentiment. No man 
can look round upon fields of his own 
like those at Pepperell, where, to a sug- 
gestive eye, the very forms of the land- 
scape seem to have caught an expression 
from the patriotism, the public spirit, the 
integrity, and the intelligence which now 
for more than a hundred years have been 
associated with them, without being con- 
scious of a rush of emotions, all of which 
set in the direction of honor and virtue. 

The name of Prescott has now, for 

more than two hundred years, been 

known and honored in Massachusetts. 

The first of the name, of whom mention 

1 06 



prescott 

is made, was Joiin Prescott, who came 
to this country in 1640, and settled in 
lyancaster. He was a blacksmith and 
millwright by trade — a man of athletic 
frame and dauntless resolution ; and his 
strength and courage were more than 
once put to the proof in those encounters 
which so often took place between the 
Indians and the early settlers of New 
England. He brought with him from 
England a helmet and suit of armor- 
perhaps an heirloom descended from 
some ancestor who had fought at Poi- 
tiers, or Flodden-field — and whenever the 
Indians attacked his house he clothed 
himself in full mail and sallied out 
against them ; and the advantages he 
is reported to have gained were proba- 
bly quite as much owing to the terror 
inspired by his appearance as to the 
prowess of his arm. 

His grandson, Benjamin Prescott, who 
lived in Groton, was a man of influence 
and consideration in the colony of Mass- 
achusetts. He represented Groton for 
107 



IPreecott 

many years in the colonial legislature, 
was a magistrate, and an officer in the 
militia. In 1735 he was chosen agent of 
the province to maintain their rights in 
a controversy with New Hampshire re- 
specting boundary lines, but declined the 
trust on account of not having had the 
small-pox, which was prevalent at the 
time in London. Mr. Edmund Quincy, 
who was appointed in his place, took the 
disease and died of it. But, in the same 
year, the messenger of fate found Mr. 
Prescott upon his own farm, engaged in 
the peaceful labors of agriculture. He 
died in August, 1735, of a sudden inflam- 
matory attack, brought on by over-exer- 
tion, in a hot day, to save a crop of grain 
from an impending shower. He was but 
forty years old at the time of his death, 
and the influence he had long enjoyed 
among a community slow to give their 
confidence to the young, is an expressive 
tribute to his character and understand- 
ing. He had the further advantage of 
a dignified and commanding personal ap- 
108 



prescott 

pearance. In 1735, the year of his death, 
he received a donation of about eight hun- 
dred acres of land from the town of Gro- 
ton for his servies in procuring a large 
territory for them from the General Court, 
and the present family estate in Pepperell 
forms probably a part of this grant. 

His second son was Col. Wm. Prescott, 
the commander of the American forces 
at the Battle of Bunker Hill, who, after 
his father's death, and while he was yet 
in his minority, settled upon the estate 
in Pepperell, and built the house which 
is still standing. Up to the age of forty- 
nine, his life, with the exception of a 
few months' service in the old French 
war, was passed in agricultural labors, 
and the discharge of those modest civic 
trusts which the influence of his family, 
and the confidence inspired by his own 
character, devolved upon him. Joining 
the army at Cambridge immediately after 
the news of the Concord fight, it was his 
good fortune to secure a permanent place 
in history, by commanding the troops of 
109 



pcescott 

his country in a battle, to which subse- 
quent events gave a significance greatly 
disproportioned both to the numbers 
engaged in it and to its immediate results. 
At the end of the campaign of 1776, he 
returned home and resumed his usual 
course of life, which continued uninter- 
rupted, except that he was present as a 
volunteer with General Gates at the sur- 
render of Burgoyne, until his death, 1795, 
when he was in his seventieth year. He 
was a man of vigorous mind, not much 
indebted to the advantages of education 
in early life, though he preserved to the 
last a taste for reading. His judgment 
and good sense were much esteemed by 
the community in which he lived, and 
were always at their service both in 
public and private affairs. He was of a 
generous temper, and somewhat impaired 
his estate by his liberal spirit and hearty 
hospitality. In the career of Colonel 
Prescott we see how well the training 
given by the institutions of New England 
fits a man for discharging worthily the 



prescott 

duties of war or peace. We see a man 
summoned from the plough, and by the 
accident of war called upon to perform 
an important military service, and in the 
exercise of his duty we find him display- 
ing that calm courage and sagacious 
judgment which a life in the camp is 
supposed to be necessary to bestow. Nor 
was his a rare case, for as the needs 
of our revolutionary struggle required 
such men, they were always forthcoming. 
Nor is there any reason to suppose that 
Colonel Prescott, himself, ever looked 
upon his conduct on the seventeenth of 
June as anything to be especially com- 
mended, but only as the performance of a 
simple piece of duty, which could not have 
been put by without shame and disgrace. 
Judge Prescott, who died in Boston in 
the month of December, 1844, at the age 
of eighty-two, was the only child of Col- 
onel Prescott, and born upon the family 
estate at Pepperell. His son, in one of 
his quoted letters, speaks of him as " the 
best and wisest of his name." It does 
III 



prcBCOtt 

not become a stranger to their blood to 
confirm or deny a comparative estimate 
like this, but all who knew Judge Pres- 
cott will agree that he must have gone 
very far who would have found a wiser 
or a better man. His active life was 
mainly passed in the unambitious labors 
of the bar ; a profession which often 
secures to its members a fair share of sub- 
stantial returns and much local influence, 
but rarely gives extended or posthumous 
fame. He had no taste for political life, 
and the few public trusts which he dis- 
charged was rather from a sense of duty 
than from inclination. 

The town of Pepperell lies in the north- 
ern part of the county of Middlesex, 
bordering upon the State of New Hamp- 
shire. Its inhabitants are mostly farmers, 
cultivating their own lands with their own 
hands — a class of men which forms the 
best wealth of a country, the value of 
whom we never properly estimate till 
we have been in regions where they have 
ceased to exist. The soil is of that rea- 

112 



prcscott 

sonable and moderate fertility, common 
in New England, which gives constant 
motive to intelligent labor, and rewards 
it with fair returns— a kind of soil very 
favorable to the growth of the plant, man. 
The character of the scenery is pleasing, 
without any claim to be called striking or 
picturesque. The land rises and falls in 
a manner that contents the eye, and the 
distant horizon is dignified by some of 
those high hills to which, in our magnilo- 
quent way, we give the name of mountains. 
The town has the advantage of being 
watered by two streams, the Nashua and 
the Nissitisset. The former is a thrifty 
New England river that turns mills, fur- 
nishes water-power, and works for its 
living in a respectable way ; the latter is 
a giddy little stream that does little else 
than look pretty ; gliding through quiet 
meadows fringed with alder and willow, 
tripping and singing over pebbly shal- 
lows, and expanding into tranquil pools, 
gemmed with white water-lilies, the purest 
and most spiritual of flowers. 
113 



prcscott 

Mr. Prescott's farm is about two miles 
from the centre of the town, in a region 
which has more than the average amount 
of that quiet beauty characteristic of New 
England scenery. The house stands upon 
rather high ground, and commands an 
extensive view of a gently-undulating 
region, most of which is grass land, which 
when clothed in the " glad, light green " 
of our early summer, and animated with 
flying cloud-shadows, presents a fine and 
exhilerating prospect. As the farm has 
been so long under cultivation, and as 
for many years past the claims of taste 
and the harvests of the eye have not been 
overlooked in its management, the land- 
scape in the immediate neighborhood of 
the house has a riper and a mellower look 
than is usual in the rural parts of New 
England. At a short distance in front, 
on the opposite side of the road, sloping 
gently down to the meadows of the Nis- 
sitisset, is a smooth symmetrical knoll, on 
which are some happily-disposed clumps 
of trees, so that the whole has the air of 
114 



Iprcscott 

a scene in an English park. The mead- 
ows and fields beyond are also well 
supplied with trees, and the morning and 
evening shadows which fall from these, 
as well as from the rounded heights, give 
character and expression to the landscape. 
The house itself has little to distinguish 
it from the better class of New Eng- 
land farm-houses. It wears our common 
uniform of white, with green blinds ; is 
long in proportion to its height, and the 
older portions bear marks of age. There 
is a piazza, occupying one side and a part 
of the front. Since it was first built there 
have been several additions made to it — 
some recently, by Mr. Prescott himself— 
so that the interior is rambling, irregular 
and old-fashioned, but thoroughly com- 
fortable, and hospitably arranged, so as 
to accommodate a large number of guests. 
These are sometimes more numerous than 
the family itself. There is a small fruit 
and kitchen garden on the east side of 
the house, and on the west, as also in 
front, is a grassy lawn, over which many 
"5 



prescott 

young feet have sported and frolicked, 
and some that were not young. 

The great charm of the house consists 
in the number of fine trees by which it is 
surrounded and overshadowed. These 
are chiefly elms, oaks, maples and butter- 
nuts. Of these last there are some re- 
markably large specimens. From these 
trees the house derives an air of dignity 
and grace which is the more conspicuous 
from the fact that these noble ornaments 
to a habitation are not so common in New 
England as is to be desired. Our agricul- 
tural population have not yet shaken 
off those transmitted impressions derived 
from a period when a tree was regarded 
as an enemy to be overcome. Would 
that the farmers of fifty years ago had 
been mindful of the injunction given by 
the dying Scotch laird to his son, " Be aye 
sticking in a tree, Jock ; it will be grow- 
ing while you are sleeping." What a 
different aspect the face of the country 
might have been made to wear. A bald 
and staring farm-house, shivering in the 
ii6 



IPrescott 

winter wind, or fainting in the summer 
sun, without a rag of a tree to cover its 
nakedness with, is a forlorn and unsightly- 
object, rather a blot upon the landscape 
than an embellishment to it. 

Behind the house, which faces the 
south, the ground rises into a consider- 
ble elevation, upon which there are also 
several fine trees. A small oval pond 
is nearly surrounded by a company of 
graceful elms, which, with their slender 
branches and pensile foliage, suggest to 
a fanciful eye a group of wood-nymphs 
smoothing their locks in the mirror of a 
fountain. At a short distance, a clump 
of oaks and chestnuts, which look as if 
they had been sown by the hand of art, 
have formed a kind of natural arbor, the 
shade of which is inviting to meditative 
feet. Under these trees Mr. Prescott has 
passed many studious hours, and his steps, 
as he has paced to and fro, have worn a 
perceptible path in the turf. A few rods 
from the house, towards the east, is an- 
other and larger pond, near which is a 
117 



Iprescott 

grove of vigorous oaks ; and, in the same 
direction, about half a mile farther, is an 
extensive piece of natural woodland, 
through which winding paths are traced, 
in which a lover of nature may soon bury 
himself in primeval shades, under broad- 
armed trees which have witnessed the 
stealthy steps of the Indian hunter, and 
shutting out the sights and sounds of 
artificial life, hear only the rustling of 
leaves, the tap of a wood-pecker, the 
dropping of nuts, the whir of a partridge, 
or the call of a sentinel crow. 

The house is not occupied by the fam- 
ily during the heats of summer ; but they 
remove to it as soon as the cool mornings 
and evenings proclaim that summer is 
over. The region is one which appears 
to peculiar advantage under an autumnal 
sky. The slopes and uplands are gay 
with the orange and crimson of the ma- 
ples, the sober scarlet and brown of the 
oaks, and the warm yellow of the hicko- 
ries. A delicate gold-dust vapor hangs in 
the air, wraps the valleys in dreamy folds, 
ii8 



prescott 

and softens all the distant outlines. The 
bracing air and elastic turf invite to long 
walks or rides ; the warm noons are de- 
lightful for driving ; and the country in 
the neighborhood, veined with roads and 
lanes that wind and turn and make no 
haste to come to an end, is well suited for 
all these forms of exercise. There is a 
boat on the Nissitisset for those who are 
fond of aquatic excursions, and a closet 
full of books for a rainy day. Among 
these are two works which seem in per- 
fect unison with the older portion of the 
house and its ancient furniture — Theo- 
bald's Shakespeare and an early edition 
of the Spectator— ho'Oa. bound in snuflf- 
colored calf, and printed on paper yellow 
with age ; and the latter adorned with 
those delicious copperplate engravings 
which perpetuate a costume so ludicrously 
absurd, that the wonder is that the wear- 
ers could ever have left off laughing at 
each other long enough to attend to any 
of the business of life. When the cool 
evenings begin to set in with something 
119 



Iprcscott 

of a wintry chill in the air, wood-fires are 
kindled in the spacious chimneys, which 
animate the low ceilings with their rest- 
less gleams, and when they have burned 
down, the dying embers diffuse a ruddy 
glow, which is just the light to tell a 
ghost-story by, such as may befit the nar- 
row rambling passages of the old farm- 
house, and send a rosy cheek to bed a 
little paler than usual. 

While Mr. Prescott is at Pepperell, a 
portion of every day is given to study ; 
and the remainder is spent in long walks 
or drives, in listening to reading, or in the 
social circle of his family and guests. 
Under his roof there is always house- 
room and heart-room for his own friends 
and those of his children. Indeed, he 
has followed the advice of some wise man 
— Dr. Johnson, perhaps, upon whom all 
vagrant scraps of wisdom are fathered — 
and kept his friendships in repair, mak- 
ing the friends of his children his own 
friends. There are many persons, not 
members of the family, who have become 



Iprcscott 

extremely attached to the place, from the 
happy hom-s they have spent there. 
There may be seen upon the window-sill 
of one of the rooms a few lines in pencil, 
by a young lady whose beauty and sweet- 
ness make her a great favorite among her 
friends, expressing her sense of a delight- 
ful visit made there, some two or three 
years since. Had similar records been 
left by all, of the happy days passed un- 
der this roof, the walls of the house would 
be hardly enough to hold them. 

And this sketch may be fitly concluded 
with the expression of an earnest wish 
that thus it may long be. May the fu- 
ture be like the past. May the hours 
which pass over a house honored by so 
much worth and endeared by so much 
kindness, bring with them no other sor- 
rows than such us the providence of God 
has inseparably linked to our mortal state 
— such as soften and elevate the heart, 
and, by gently weaning it from earth, 
help to dress the soul for its new home. 



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